How Open Source EDC Can Make Clinical Trials More Productive

Barbara Zwick, from the European clinical trial Evidence and Performance Blog recently published an interview with Ben Baumann, Director of Business Development at Akaza Research. The interview discusses how open source EDC (Electronic Data Capture) clinical trials software can help enhance product time to market and overall productivity of clinical trials. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

[BZ] Today’s big Pharma R&Ds are increasing their demand for efficiency and effectiveness. How are you facing this accelerating demand for speed to market?

[BB] There are a number of ways that OpenClinica can accelerate time-to-market. First, open source software can be much easier and quicker to evaluate and get up and running than proprietary software. People can readily install it and experiment with it. Potential adopters can readily inspect everything down to the source code and directly interact with other members of the OpenClinica community to get rapid, unbiased, real-world feedback.

In addition to a full set of EDC and CDM features one might expect in such a system, OpenClinica has built-in features that give users the ability to set-up their own studies. Therefore, an organization can get a complete picture of how well the system will work for them before committing to use it.

In short, an organization can make a rapid and highly informed decision whether or not to use OpenClinica without having to go through lengthy vendor-biased demonstrations and negotiations, and rely on a vendor in order to get their studies configured appropriately.

[BZ] How can technologies serve to clinical trial performance, to minimize costs and time to market, and to allow rapid decision making? Are innovative EDC technologies, like your platform, more performant and focused on this specific need, rather than ‘old-fashioned’ EDC Solutions?

[BB] Aside from features of the product and benefits of the open source model described above, Akaza Research’s business model for support is designed to maximize productivity of clinical trials. Our support is comprehensive and highly flexible, so customers are able to obtain support packages tailored to their needs. In addition, our customers find our support to be of extremely high quality-after all support is our primary source of revenue.

Most of our support isn’t priced “per study” so clients are able to amortize their investment over numerous studies and don’t have to go through a lengthy contracting process for each new clinical trial they want to use OpenClinica for. This can really help to minimize costs and accelerate the set-up time for new studies.

[BZ] What are the pro and cons of an open source technologies versus a classical technology in the SaaS model?

[BB] First, OpenClinica is available under both a SaaS model and local deployment. Open source has a number of benefits over “classical” proprietary EDC systems. Here are a few examples:

– Reduce vendor lock-in. Numerous proprietary EDC companies have failed and gone out of business. Open source products exist and evolve independently of any particular vendor, so if one vendor ceases to exist, there are others readily available to take their place.

– Improved security. Open source software is frequently more secure and bug free than proprietary software. The open source code is continuously (and often intensely) scrutinized by large community developers and security experts. As a result bugs and security issues are found and fixed usually before they become real problems.

– Readily customizable. Open source systems can be readily customized and extended–you don’t need to rely on a vendor who may or may not make the software modifications you need. If the system doesn’t work the way to want it to, you can change it.

– Enhanced validation. Validation can be much more thorough with open source software. Buying proprietary software is like buying a car with the hood welded shut-you don’t know what’s really know going on behind the scenes. Open source provides the highest level of transparency making it possible to truly validate a system from end-to-end.